Your Right to Know

Gov. John Kasich and his aides spent much of yesterday explaining why he allowed an executive order to lapse that could have forced Terry W. Thompson to give up his private menagerie.

“If there’s some way I could’ve prevented it, I would,” Kasich said after a business event in Canton. “But what we have to do is move forward and make sure we can clearly limit anything like this in the future.”

But Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive officer of the Humane Society of the United States, said the Zanesville animal situation could have been prevented had Kasich extended and enforced an exotic-animals ban signed by former Gov. Ted Strickland just before leaving office in January. The ban was the last component of an animal-welfare deal worked out by Strickland, the Humane Society, Ohio Farm Bureau and others.

Bill Damschroder, chief legal counsel for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources — the agency that would have enforced the animal order — said he determined that it “exceeded the agency’s authority.”

Damschroder said legislation was not in place that empowered the agency to do the things required by Strickland’s order. In addition, it allocated no resources for statewide enforcement.

But others questioned the Kasich administration’s reasoning.

Dan Kobil, a constitutional-law expert at Capital University, said decisions by the Ohio Supreme Court indicate that it is “at least strongly arguable that the governor has authority to issue an executive order to direct the ODNR to make rules protecting the state’s property ... from exotic animals.”

Under Ohio law, the governor is granted broad executive authority, including the power to issue executive orders. The only apparent limitation in the Ohio Revised Code concerns action that would violate antitrust laws.

Ohio governors have used their wide-ranging authority in numerous ways over the years. Kasich himself recently used his executive authority to spare the life of condemned killer Joseph Murphy of Marion and to authorize thousands of electronic slot machines for Ohio horse-race tracks.

Strickland’s order did not ban ownership overall but required owners to register exotic animals with the state by May 1, 2011. It also prohibited anyone “convicted of an offense involving the abuse or neglect of any animal pursuant to any state, local, or federal law” from owning exotic animals.

Thompson had an animal-cruelty and two other related convictions in 2005.

In an interview with The Dispatch, Strickland said his order was “a common-sense compromise ... We tried to be fair in certain grandfather provisions. But someone with a record like this man was not intended to have these animals.

“What’s happened is tragic and unfortunate. I don’t know why the order wasn’t extended. ... Maybe we can learn from this incident and hope this doesn’t happen in the future.”

Janetta King, who was Strickland’s policy director, disputed the claim that the executive order was unenforceable, saying state law specifically gives the ODNR “very broad authority to regulate wild animals.”

“No one challenged this at the time, so it’s interesting we’re just hearing this objection now — conveniently,” King said.

Yesterday, Kasich vowed, “We’ll get this fixed.

“This is unbelievable that this even existed, and what’s hard for me to understand is why Ohio over time didn’t deal with this, but we’ll deal with it now. And that’s what’s most important going forward.”

Rob Nichols, spokesman for Kasich, said the governor intends to ask Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz and some of his deputies to be involved in going over the framework for a proposal to tighten Ohio laws on owning exotic animals.

“The unintended consequence of somebody doing something completely crazy is always going to exist,” Kasich said. “You can’t solve all of this with statute. But we think it’s important we have tougher rules, tougher regulations and common sense.

“But we want to do it the right way. We don’t want to misstep and then we come back and have somebody, in some other part of Ohio, release an animal because they’re told they have to register and there’s going to be a big fine.”

Jack Hanna, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo, was very disturbed by what transpired and vowed to prevent it from happening again.

“I’m not the governor, but I’ll do everything I can over my dead body to put these people out of business,” Hanna said.

Ohio is one of a handful of states with no rules or regulations on private ownership of non-native wild animals. Thompson’s personal collection was not inspected or given a permit by the state or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees animal breeders and exhibitors. Thompson was neither.

Pacelle, of the Humane Society, said Ohio now has a “Wild West situation.”

“One of the reasons we advocated for a ban was that these things never end well for the animals,” Pacelle said. “In this case, a lot of animal suffering could have been prevented.”

He urged Kasich to issue his own executive order.

“We need an emergency rule right away,” Pacelle said. “Nothing in the nation has come close to this number of large, dangerous animals in a populated area.”

Earlier this year, Kasich put the ODNR in charge of a working group to craft legislation controlling the sale and ownership of exotic animals and reptiles. That group has been developing a proposal in private meetings for several months but has not completed the task.

The group includes representatives of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Humane Society of the U.S., Knox County prosecutor’s office, Ohio Association of Animal Owners, Ohio Farm Bureau, Ohio Veterinary Medical Association, U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance and Zoo Association of America.

Scott Zody, interim Natural Resources director, said the group has a draft outline of animal rules that eventually will be submitted to the General Assembly for legislative action. That could happen in 30 days, he said.

The group’s work will be expedited because of the Zanesville incident, Zody said.

The Ohio Veterinary Medical Association said yesterday that the events “serve as a reminder that Ohio’s absence of meaningful regulation of exotic animals needs to be addressed in an appropriate and timely manner.”

The veterinarians support “legislative and regulatory efforts to restrict private ownership of indigenous and non-native wild animals that pose a significant risk to public health, domestic animal health or the ecosystem.”

For the time being, the sale of exotic animals continues unabated in Ohio. A website for the busy Mount Hope Auction in Holmes County, where livestock and others animals are regularly auctioned, has sales scheduled Nov. 4-5 in which buffalo, camels, zebras, kangaroos, wallabies, llamas, alpacas, ostriches and emus will be auctioned. The auction site says it does not accept wolves, bears, tigers or cats of any kind.